“They are boycotting the movie.” Brittany, my Black colleague, waved her hand in a gesture of helplessness—or maybe frustration. “What!” I exclaimed. “What on earth for? It is an amazing movie.”
I went on. “The Black woman behind me in the theater cried as much as I did. We chatted on the way out about how fantastic and uplifting the movie was and how both our white and Black friends raved about it.” Others I talked to said it was a breakthrough to make a public point of how both Africans and Europeans were guilty of promoting the slave trade, a point I hoped would bring people together in a shared understanding about the universal evil that resides in all of humankind and our shared responsibility to stop it.
As the great philosopher Hanna Arendt said, “For the idea of humanity, when purged of all sentimentality, has the very serious consequence that in one form or another men must assume responsibility for all crimes committed by men and that all nations share the onus of evil committed by all others.”
The movie is not historically accurate—who cares? Examples of the lack of historical accuracy notably include Hamilton, Cleopatra and Passion of the Christ. It is accurate in terms of universal truths. It makes a valid point. It entertains, uplifts, and empowers. Who cares who wrote it, as long as it was written with the best intentions and the results were unequivocally for the good?
No apologies required.
This story isn’t Trump fiction, whose only goal is to deceive and dismantle democracy. Stop the boycott, see the movie.
I recently read this in The Week magazine: Today’s Democrats have a bit of a problem with patriotism. The essay went on to suggest that all this emphasis on America’s less than stellar history of racism, slavery, and greed undercuts pride in country and promotes a white-supremacist point of view.
I’ve heard this all before. This essayist, unlike those trying to sway white voters, is a Democrat, and his fear is that these attempts at rectifying past (and continuing) injustices could hurt Democrats’ political ambitions. I’m not buying it! As the essayist, Ruy Texeira, says, “The average non-white American would choose to live in America rather than anywhere in the world.” My guess is that the average white American feels the same way.
Learning our history is not about shaming white America; but learning from the past and joining hands can lead to building a better shared future. The problem may lie in how that history is taught and promoted. The solution may lie in how solutions are publicized and promoted.
It certainly doesn’t help when prominent Democrats refer to people who have borne the brunt of these solutions, like affirmative action and globalization, as ‘despicables.’ It doesn’t help when pro-choice is labeled pro-abortion, and it is worse when Republicans suggest that only whites can rule effectively.
To be fair, when communities change from a white political majority to a Black or Hispanic majority, they play the same win-lose game that their white predecessors played, casting aside diversity and shared decision-making to achieve political domination.
We don’t have to rewrite history to maintain belief in America, to maintain our patriotism. We just have to believe that we can right the wrongs of the past because we choose to keep our country strongly committed to its democratic principles.
I was in the final countdown to my 80th birthday when COVID struck. The Typhoid Mary in this case was my brother-in-law, who was convinced that he had a cold. I should have known better. I did know better and began to get concerned after day two of being with him and my sister—but too late! His doctor gave him an infusion of anti-viral meds. His wife, my sister, wound up in the hospital with COVID in her lungs; she was treated with lots of drugs including Remdesivir, an anti-viral medicine that presidents are given when they catch the virus. They are both responding well to treatment.
I didn’t test positive until three days later. The faint pink line sealed my fate! My symptoms are relatively mild, and with any luck they will stay that way. I had the Bivalent vaccine over three weeks ago and hope it works. I just got my eyebrows permanently affixed, so I’m not sure if my head hurts from the procedure or from COVID. The curse of COVID: is it really the virus or sinus problems, the flu, or a common cold?
If anyone thinks the pandemic is over, think again.
I called my daughter to ask her what was wrong because her texts had not been “quite” right. Blubbering with sorrow, she told me that Phyllis had been carried off in the night and was surely dead. Through tears and sniffles, she said that the worst part was imagining Phyllis’s horrible death and the fear she must have felt.
Ah, you might think her grief was for the death of a relative or a victim of the atrocities of war taking a human toll in Ukraine. And you would be right to think that. I wake up every morning to the news, conjuring up such horrible visions in my head.
But no, this wasn’t about that.
Phyllis was my daughter’s pet chicken. Before you sigh, let me say that while a chicken is hardly a human casualty, like those reported daily in the news, love and anguish has room for all the life that we hold dear. My daughter raised Phyllis and Isabelle, two bantam chickens–one silky, one curly–from the time they were chicks. She has had them a decade or more. They sat on her lap, followed her around the yard and, for several years, laid tiny little chicken eggs.
Now Isabelle, somewhat demented, roams around lost without Phyllis. We have to keep her inside the house in a crate at night to keep her warm. She has lost her ability to be a chicken without Phyllis.
Winter is coming and the people of Ukraine, the Syrians still in camps, and the rest of suffering humanity awaits the cold and prays for a warm bed to sleep in and an end to the rain of death that has become part of their daily existence.
I can feel my daughter’s sadness over the loss of Phyllis.
I hope the world can feel the pain of those who need our help.
The two-hour Trailways bus trip from Portland to Bangor, Maine, would have been pleasant if not for the barrage of emails from my estranged adopted daughter wanting money so that she could move from my house to a rental house (too long a story for here). The benefit was that the two hours passed quickly, the problem was resolved, and I could get on with my trip to Down East Maine.
I had two reasons for visiting Maine. It had been exactly a year since my sister fell down a wooded hillside and drove a pine branch through her frontal lobe. I had not yet visited her in person because her earlier condition made visits useless. Inhospitable Maine weather stopped later travel north; then life and other obligations conspired to keep me away. (She is doing well.)
The second reason was to spend my friend Kathleen’s birthday with her while she was at her ancestral home in Roque Bluffs visiting her 97-year-old mother. Kathleen, Beatrice, and I, all Libras, have been celebrating our birthdays together whenever we could for the past thirty years.
So, to the point. I arrived at the small settlement of Roque Bluffs for five days of foliage peeping, whale watching, apple picking, New Hampshire Cog-rail and an unsettling experience in the dichotomy between the Maine summer people and the locals. Roque Bluffs is a bit different from other nearby coastal towns and islands in that the summer people there are actually descendants of original settlers and tend to have money. (I stayed with the matriarch of the Longfellows. At 97, she still divided her time between Maine and a small chalet on the Spanish Mediterranean.) In towns like Bar Harbor or Machias Port as well as islands like North Haven, there are few family connections between locals and summer people. Instead, there is a loose transactional relationship, much more like a caste system, which divided the population into the haves and have-nots—lords and serfs. The summer people are from the New England Brahmin class, and they ironically are totally dependent upon the locals for their survival.
I met several people who confided that when a summer person discovered a local, they often simply walked away as if the local person was invisible.
It is not that we don’t have a class/caste system in the rest of the country. Like
Down East Maine, it is based not on religious orthodoxy, as in Hinduism, but on affluence and family status—much of which is inherited rather than earned.
I dream of equality. I dream of a country that partners together to build a great society for all. That only happens when we lose the win-lose mindset—so let’s do that.
Bonus: While there, my friends made fried zucchini flowers from the very last of the fall harvest. Here is the recipe! Phenomenal.
1.Mix ¾ cup flour; ¼ cup corn starch; salt and pepper to taste
2. After mixing add in a bit of very cold sparkling seltzer till mix is of crepe consistency
3. Stuff zucchini flower with one anchovy fillet and a couple of squares of mozzarella cheese
4. Dip flower into mix, twist end and deep fry in vegetable oil
I’m going to reprint my earlier blog about the women’s protest in Iran, but first I’d like to ask: Where are the #MeToo voices? Are not Iranian women our sisters in the same struggle to end misogyny? And why are Nancy, Oprah, Michelle, and Kamala silent on this issue?
If you are on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook, speak out. If not us, then who?
Earlier blog repeated:
For decades I have been part of the struggle for women’s rights. I have organized events and conferences dedicated to reaching across to sisters of every ethnicity and race to build a global community of women. But, it was not until October 2002 that my ideals were given both challenge and opportunity to “walk her talk”. Out of that experience came a friendship and opened a world which had been long closed to me.
In that October I met an Iranian colleague and together built an unlikely friendship between a Jew and a Muslim. Two years later, I joined her on a trip to Iran where I was required to wear a hijab. There I met dozens of well-educated, talented, and beautiful women, all chafing under a brutal regime which severely limited their freedom of expression and diminished their contributions to their society.
Now the women of Iran have bravely taken to the streets protesting the killing of the young lady, Mahsa Amini by the Morality Police. Do you know why she was killed? Because her scarf was not covering all of her hair!!!
The biggest war for feminism is happening in Iran right now. Iranian women need our support, learn about them, be their voice, and share their stories.
Just before COVID shut down travel, I spent three months circumnavigating the globe. When I returned home, I found mixed in with the mountain of junk mail a few birthday cards and several Amazon packages containing things I had ordered (like my favorite hair gel, so the stuff would be there when I got home) as well as a large UPS box postmarked Nepal. Christmas came early, and I must admit I felt relieved that I had ignored my pledge not to shop while wandering around the planet.
In each country I visited, I had used an app to send postcards to the fourth graders at the inner-city elementary school where I read to them weekly. When I returned, the kids added up the distance I had traveled from point to point—a total of 27,000 miles. One little boy raised his hand, apprehension darkening his face. “Yes?” I asked. “Dr. G., do your feet hurt?” I thanked him for his concern and, trying not to laugh, reminded him that they were air miles, not hiking miles.
When I was a young mother living in Miami, Florida, I would pack my toddler daughter into her car seat, grab a couple of PB&J sandwiches and a thermos of milk, and head for the airport’s perimeter road. There I would park, turn the car radio to the control tower frequency, and listen as we watched the planes take off and land. It was one of my favorite activities. At that time, these excursions were about the only kind of travel I could afford. Oh, there was the occasional family outing to one of Florida’s famous tourist attractions, but I found them too plastic, too phony. Except for Cape Canaveral. Back then, I wanted to be on one of those planes taking off from Miami’s international airport—or, better yet, at the cape, strapped into a rocket ship to the moon.
It wasn’t until midlife that I had the opportunity to travel, and travel I have—by car, rail, plane, ship, and on foot. If someone asked me whether I wanted to go somewhere that I had never been, there was only one answer: yes. When yes was my response to an invitation by a friend to visit her home in Isfahan, Iran, at the height of the Iraq War (amid some widely televised beheadings), my children had panic attacks. On another occasion, I went to Mexico with an artist friend. We took only pastels, no cameras. Since we had no itinerary, we just crisscrossed the country from place to place as transportation became available or the spirit moved us. One night, after arriving too late in a town to find a place to stay, we convinced a young man to take us to his tia’s house. She and her three small niñas were away, so we slept in tiny beds with tiny pillows. Sometime during the night, the young man panicked and begged us to leave. I think he thought we were hatchet murderers. We managed to convince him to let us stay until dawn.
By the time I took my first trip around the world in the late 1980s with my mother, I had done some academic traveling—mainly to destinations in the United States and Canada. I began crossing states and major cities off my wall map, along with some Western European countries. On the round-the-world trip, my mom and I traveled for several months, staying mostly with former physics students who had studied with my then-husband. As the professor’s wife, with the additional advantage of traveling with an elderly mother, I was hosted and entertained in China, Hong Kong, India, and Thailand. That was the trip where I left her in New Delhi and went alone to Nepal. Mom and I were compatible travelers, except that she had a strict rule about not going out at night. We didn’t then. Now I don’t, either.
Another time, my elder brother invited me along to be my mother’s roommate on a trip to South Africa and Rhodesia, when she wanted to go on safari for her eighty-fifth birthday. On that occasion, I had a bit of a tiff with my sister-in-law because I wouldn’t pull my mother’s carry-on bag. Mom and I had long ago made a pledge never to pack more than we could carry ourselves. Marlene was so put out with me that she thrust my brother’s photography equipment into my arms and ordered, “Carry this!” Since they were footing the bill, I carried my brother’s camera equipment; mom took care of her own stuff. Consulting with the military on women’s issues provided a free opportunity to travel, courtesy of the Department of Defense, as did volunteering for UNTAC, the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Cambodia. I traveled to military bases the world over and, after UNTAC, I set out to visit the distant friends I’d made while supervising the Cambodian election.
I never gave wandering much thought. You travel somewhere; you marvel at the sights; you inhale the smells and taste the flavors of your surroundings. You make friends of strangers and renew ties to old friends. I am not a careful traveler. I don’t have specific agendas for must-see places, and I don’t spend a lot of time reflecting on what I have seen. I read less than fifteen percent of the little placards in museums, rarely sit for long in front of any masterpiece, or prepare myself for an exhibit. Shamefully, I’ve been known not to get past a museum gift shop, without seeing any galleries whatsoever. But I do know this with certainty. I will continue to be a wanderer . . . until I can’t.
In October of this year, I will turn eighty. I am fully vaccinated and running out of time. COVID be damned! I’ve got my mask, and I’m on my way.
Even before I boarded the plane for the ten-hour flight from Singapore, I had the distinct impression that Fiji was going to be strange. The ground crew wouldn’t let me enter the jet bridge until I showed proof of an outgoing flight. Besides not being very friendly, their behavior was quite odd, although the Fiji airport in Nadi was really nice. Modern, clean, and busy. There was even a native band to greet us passengers—large, dark-skinned men wearing bright floral shirts and dark blue cotton skirts, playing guitars and banjos.
I couldn’t find a cab. Everyone was going to Suva, the capital, to try to catch a glimpse of Prince Harry and his American bride, Meghan, who were touring Australia and the South Pacific Islands; they would be in Suva the following day. Eventually I found a tourist office next to the currency exchange. After I booked a day tour, the smiling, sarong-clad woman hailed me a cab.
I wasn’t prepared for the squalor of Nadi, a city on Fiji’s main island. It didn’t look like the Fiji I had seen on HGTV. The buildings were dilapidated; the cars were old; and the storefronts were a combination of Indian and inner-city general stores. My hotel, the JFK, was a rundown building on a small side road called Vunavou Street. The rooms were located above a small South Indian restaurant in the front and a nightclub in the back. I was greeted by two Fijian women, Betty and Milly, who smiled and reassured me that I would be just fine. “Quiet and clean,” they said as they led me up to my eight-foot-square cramped room with a large covered window facing the street. It bore no resemblance to the photo on Booking.com.
I threw my suitcase on the bed and went out to stretch my legs and decide whether I could actually stay there. I walked down the main street, observing school boys in long shorts or sarongs and girls in white or blue shifts, depending on the school they attended. Many of the men were huge and very dark, some heart-stopping handsome—a big mix of Fijian (descendants of Tanzanian Africans by way of Indonesia), East Indian, and European (probably Australian). Men wore sarongs; women strolled in bright floral dresses or Indian saris.
The sign above the door said “Authentic Fiji Crafts.” The windows were full of beautiful wood carvings, inlaid turtles, and large bowls. I was greeted by two men who, with total disregard for my jet lag, convinced me to imbibe a cup of Kava, Fiji’s national and ceremonial welcoming drink. Of course, it came with a sales pitch, and now I own a lovely carved turtle!
Ear plugs and determination got me through the first night. I had scheduled a few tours with a very local tour agency. (The staff operated out of a hair salon and assured me that all proceeds stayed in the local community.) I decided not to move to new accommodations quite yet. I liked Betty and Milly, they made little animals out of towels like you find on cruise ships, and there were no bugs—although I would have to find a better place for breakfast.
On my first tour, I learned that Tom Cruise owns one of the 320 islands that make up Fiji. His is the only island inhabited with deer, which he imported from the United States. The late Raymond Burr, an orchid enthusiast, also lived in Fiji. The tour group, consisting of me and an Australian couple, visited the Sleeping Giant Garden—a large, lush botanical garden where Burr grew his orchids and plants. Our guide drove us to a nearby, typical Fijian village and pointed out the chief’s house. It was easy to spot, because a chief’s house is always in the village center and has the tallest roof. The homes of families belonging to the warrior tribe surrounded the chief’s home. All the houses were modest, and in many cases even primitive. Each village has a church, unless it happens to be a Hindu or Muslim village. The absence of a church is one way to determine whose village it is, but there is also a more colorful indication. Muslims paint their homes, schools, and buses green; Hindus put red flags on their homes. The guide told us how the first Christian missionary was eaten by locals, but assured us that Fijians are no longer cannibals. (I heard the same story from another traveler before I left Laos.) However, Milly, at the hotel, said there were still some practicing cannibals in remote villages. Our tour ended at the flamingo-pink Sri Siva Subramaniya Hindu temple that guards the southern entrance to Nadi—an outlandish reminder of the growing Hindu population of Fiji.
I followed the tour with a back massage, a nap, and a few minutes on the hotel’s computer to try to connect with my online class. Then I went to the Port Denarau Marina. It was there that I made the decision to stay with Milly and Betty at the JFK. The marina could have been in Naples or Sanibel Island, Florida, down to some of the same franchises like the Hard Rock Café and the Bone Fish Grill. Although I wound up eating dinner with a pleasant enough family from New Zealand, I wanted nothing more than to return to Nadi, put my ear plugs in, and try to stay awake until 9:00 p.m. so that I could sleep through the music and the night.
On my next tour I visited the coral coast, where I walked along the surf, chatted with hunky fisherman, drank fresh coconut juice, and rejected the souvenir sellers who accepted “no” replies with smiles and kind words. This time I was joined by a mother and daughter from New Zealand. While I walked the beach, the mom had her hair braided into cornrows and the daughter had an hour-long massage on the beach.
Our driver, a middle aged Indian fellow, had a terrible sinus problem and breathed so loudly that I had to sit in the backseat just to be able to think. We left the beach, with its competing views of the surf and the magnificent Hilton resort, and drove to a lovely Fijian village where, after passing on the Kava ritual, we took a challenging hike up to a nearby waterfall. I wasn’t prepared for the hike nor the cold freshwater streams that we had to cross to get there. Sometimes being the old lady comes in handy; the village women—our tour guides—were happy to hold my arm or wait while I caught my breath.
To my tummy’s dismay, our driver took us to a typical Indian restaurant for lunch—whether it was owned by a relative or just his lunch preference, I wasn’t sure. Fiji is a unique fusion of South India and Fiji island culture, which is simultaneously colorful and confusing. Restaurant food tends to be Indian, hot and spicy. Fijian food, mostly vegetables, is slow-cooked in the ground so that you have to be in a village to enjoy it. In addition to this culinary competition, politics is becoming more strained between the two ethnicities as they each vie for power and influence. The British brought Indians to the islands as cheap labor in the late 1900s, and they stayed. Now they account for a large percentage of the population and, thus, the political rivalry is heating up the airwaves. I got a good dose of the rhetoric while being driven around the island with car radios tuned to local talk shows.
The climate of Fiji is much like Hawaii’s—perfect—and the surf and beaches are pristine. But my tour unmasked the poverty that exists alongside outrageous displays of wealth. Much of the coastal land and big resorts are on property leased or sold by the Fijians who remain in villages and the outlying islands. It’s hard to tell whether the wealth is all foreign in origin or belongs to these unseen, ancient Fijian families. Sugar cane and tourism are the biggest revenue streams, and the locals welcome anyone who comes to pump money into the economy.
I think the phrase “saving the best for last” is actually a lyric from a popular song. For me however, it describes my final tour—the one I had booked at the airport on arrival—and it was wonderful. Four other people went on this tour: two young Chinese men from Hong Kong and an older, retired Australian couple. I suppose it was wonderful because it included a visit to a village school.
“Bula!” As soon as we walked into the school, we were greeted with shouts of “hello.” I’m sure we were just a few in the procession of tourists who came to visit, and yet we were treated as special guests. After introducing ourselves, we were entertained, classroom by classroom, with songs and smiles. Like those in Laos, this school had no working computers—no technology at all, for that matter. But the blackboards and walls were covered with grade-appropriate materials for science, math, and spelling; posters reminded the students of the rules of good behavior. Children did not wear uniforms like in the town schools; most did wear shoes, however. All of them were eager to tell us about rugby.
From the school we went to a neighboring village for the best meal I had eaten in days. The turanga ni koro (village headman) greeted us and provided each of the women with a sulu (Fijian sarong) to tie around her waist. Once we were properly attired, the headman—in this case, the top security person in the village and a member of the warrior clan—invited us into his kitchen to help finish cooking our lunch. It was a vegetarian meal, cooked underground and then suffused with fresh-squeezed coconut juice. I wanted to stay there forever! Chengdu could keep its pandas; I wanted traditional Fijian food.
Eating requires yet another ceremony. Shoeless, we entered the large central room, sat cross-legged on the floor and, bowing our heads slightly, introduced ourselves. Before eating, guests are always invited to participate in a yaqona, a Kava-drinking ceremony. I wondered how many times a day our host had to drink this potent beverage, along with his guests. Eventually we were permitted to dig in, using our hands and eating family-style.
Little children, who were not in school, danced and sang. Two villagers joined us and played guitars. The elderly Australian woman got up and danced, and the headman seemed bent on hugging me. A good, strong embrace by a big handsome Fijian man was okay with me. I did learn, however, that Fijian men tend toward infidelity.
Only one experience will remain in my memory longer than this remarkable day—my visit with Milly to her large village, which lies just outside the northern end of Nadi. It was my last day in Fiji. Milly had asked me the previous day if I would like to visit her home, her children, and her village. She seemed genuinely pleased when I accepted her invitation, and she was surprised when I returned from the tour and asked if she would still take me home with her. “Yes,” she said. “We will walk to my village and take a cab back, if that’s okay. I have to work at the nightclub tonight, and I need to change.”
Nadi town, as the locals called it, was not much more than a few miles long, so I figured I could walk the distance. We set out at a quick pace and, thirty minutes later, arrived at a village of makeshift dwellings and cardboard bridges spanning puddles. Barefoot children, from babies to eight-year-olds, were playing here and there with runny noses. Milly, after introducing me to her three kids, a couple of cousins, and an aunt, abandoned me to get ready—”dolled-up,” as her aunty called it—for her evening job. One little girl playing amongst the gang of youngsters, a mulatto, was the product of a white great grandmother and her Fijian lover. If anyone took offense at her blue-green eyes and light, creamy skin, they didn’t show it. I chatted with the women, watched the children play and chase chickens and pigs, and marveled at the relaxed attitude they seemed to take toward their living situation. I had just finished a glass of homemade lemonade when Milly reappeared, dressed in heels and a slinky dress, perfumed and made-up. She looked more like a woman on the hunt than a waitress at a club. We said our goodbyes; she kissed her kids, and we headed out to the main road. We walked a few blocks till we were able to hail a cab into town. The cab driver stopped several blocks short of our destination and told us to get out because he had a fare to pick up. Aghast, I said that he was to take us to the JFK or I was not paying him. “Fine, don’t pay me. Just go.” Milly and I wasted no time tumbling out of the cab. She looked at me with new-found admiration.
I left Milly and Betty the last of my Opium perfume along with some makeup, a pair of sandals, and a few blouses that I didn’t want to drag home. I’m not sure I could have managed another night at the JFK, but I was glad that I had stayed there and not moved out of town. By the end of my few days in Nadi, the locals knew me, waved to me as I sat at a local coffee shop in the early morning, told their children to say bula, and smiled when we passed on the street.
Unrest has swept Iran since a young woman died in custody for failing to wear her hijab correctly. This is not a “ME TOO” movement where protesters may be scorned, booed or, at worst, demoted. This is a revolution, and people are dying as they take to the streets.
Anyone who believed that the January 6th protestors were ill-treated should see what a country without our protections do to those who protest. We could also be that type of country if the right-wing radicals have their way and dismantle our election processes so that they have the freedom to carry AR-15s!
Iran is far away. The Iranian government is not a friend of the U.S. But Iran is a cautionary tale for us all. And Iranian women are not our enemy. Pay attention and support them if you can.
Pay attention to your legislatures’ actions and protest them if you must.
I decided to stream GAMBIT on Starz. It’s the story of Margaret Mitchell and the Watergate break-in. The acting was excellent but, as the episodes continued, they took on a surreal, almost comic book quality. As a former electoral worker in Cambodia, I witnessed first-hand the destruction wreaked by US B-52s under Nixon’s direction. I believe that Nixon should have been impeached and not allowed to resign. However, to paint all the GAMBIT characters involved with such a hateful brush seemed unnecessary. It felt like retribution and dirty tricks from the other side. In the end, I didn’t enjoy the series.
And then, I learned of two incidents that shocked and dismayed me. Both displayed the lengths to which Democrats and Republicans will go in today’s America for political gain.
The Naming Commission is a United States governmentcommission created by the U.S. Congress in 2021 under Democratic leadership. Its purpose is to rename military assets, which have names associated with the Confederate States of America. The current projected cost for their current proposal is $62 milliondollars.
Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Florida legislature allocated $12 million of the state’s budget to transport “illegal migrants” to blue states.
And if you’re not convinced that our two-party political system, both Republicans and Democrats, are working against bringing our country back together, then read this: the 2020 election cost $14.4 billion, the most expensive election ever.
I understand that there are those who are deeply offended that we honored those Confederate persons. But most people, offended or not, would prefer that the sixty-two million dollars be spent to help those in need, to enhance public schools, and to provide affordable medical care and access to housing. They would prefer that the money be allocated to food security, infrastructure, or anything else that can help people today.
Transporting migrants to northern states? Those millions could be used to mitigate the costs of processing people humanely and fairly, as well as enhancing Florida’s schools and public safety. The transporting is a stunt that helps no one but the politicians who do it.
Really, I’m so tired of our lack of credible, honest, practical, and humane politicians. I think I’ve really had enough.
How do we respond? We vote. But we vote for a person, not a political party.
*The photo is outside the museum celebrating the novel, The Master and Margarita, by M. Bulgakov. In it Woland, the devil, and his henchmen play dirty tricks. Its a glorious read.
Carole J. Garrison 